An Israeli official warned on Tuesday that Russia’s plan to aid Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime with defense weapons systems will provoke Israel to respond with force, reports NBC News:
Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon told reporters that the looming shipment of Russian anti-aircraft S300 missiles was "a threat," according to reports in the Haaretz newspaper and elsewhere.
"The shipments haven’t set out yet and I hope they won’t. If they do arrive in Syria, God forbid, we’ll know what to do," he said.
Russia said on Tuesday that it will go through with the arms shipment. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Rybkov said the systems will "restrain some hotheads from escalating the conflict to the international scale."
Ryabkov defended the deal with Syria. "Those systems by definition cannot be used by militant groups on the battlefield," he said, according to Russia Today. "We consider this delivery a factor of stabilization. We believe that moves like this one to a great degree restrain some hotheads from escalating the conflict to the international scale, from involving external forces."
